Instruction on contrastive stress significantly improves rated comprehensibility of intermediate ESL learners' spontaneous picture-comparison speech¶

Claim · All claims
Evidence · 1 study · causal r1 · q2
Currency · newest study 2018 · not yet checked against its sources · not reviewed by a person

Subclaims¶

q2 i? After six 25-minute lessons on contrastive stress, the experimental group's spontaneous speech received significantly higher comprehensibility ratings at posttest. → Levis and Levis 2018

Evidence¶

Levis and Levis 2018¶

John M. Levis & Greta Muller Levis. (2018). Teaching High-Value Pronunciation Features: Contrastive Stress for Intermediate Learners. The CATESOL Journal, 30(1). https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ1174193

q2 · i? · causal · r1

Pretest-posttest classroom study with 18 experimental intermediate ESL learners in an Intensive English Program; 20 native-speaker raters rated picture-comparison descriptions on a 9-point scale. The article reports "a significant improvement at posttest" (z=2.09, p=.037), with combined means rising from 4.991 to 5.459.

"Table 3 shows the means and standard deviations for comprehensibility ratings; there was a significant improvement at posttest using the Wilcoxon signed-rank test (z=2.09, p=.037). All picture comparisons were rated higher on average at the posttest"

Discussion¶

Related Claims¶

• Instruction on contrastive stress did not significantly improve fluency ratings of intermediate learners' spontaneous speech — related
• Explicit pronunciation instruction improves controlled production of targeted sounds and prosody, with smaller and less certain gains in spontaneous speech — a broader claim this one bears on